EVENING WALK. 337 



rather mingle with it the melancholy memento, that, 

 fine as it is, you can enjoy it but for a time ; or the 

 more useful one, that you should seize the phenomena 

 of every moment for instruction, according to the mood 

 you may be in. The freshness, the checquered light 

 through the trees, the occasional glimpse of the river 

 dancing in the reflected moonbeam, like living silver, 

 put you in mind that it is not a pond that stag- 

 nates and mantles, and scatters miasma and infection, 

 but a rolling flood which wafts riches, and scatters fer- 

 tility and health ; the lights from palace, and villa, and 

 cottage, and those joyous sounds which come ever 

 and anon, to remind you that for all that has been 

 done and suffered, it is "merry England" still; the 

 dark shadow of some thick and stately tree that throws 

 you, your path, and all around, into a momentary 

 eclipse, or the trailing mark of some limber poplar, as 

 though it were the tail of a comet, lustreless and flung 

 dark, yet unsubstantial upon the earth : But you are 

 in no humour to look even at the half-revealed beauties 

 of one of the richest districts in the world, rendered 

 doubly rich by the Rembrandt shades of the greater 

 masses of matter, in contrast with the " silver orb," 

 seen at intervals, through the upper sprays and leaves, 

 or its more retiring reflection from the water, in the 

 openings among the thick stems and dark foliage 

 below ; for the nightingale is on the topmost bough in 

 the coppice, and small as he is, his voice is heard as 

 far as that of a muezzin from the top of a minaret. 

 There he does not sing alone, for in that thickly-wooded 

 and well-watered district a district which is the land 

 of Goshen to the insect-discovering birds he has a 



